People are going to feel what they feel. As a trans person I recognize that this isn’t for me. It’s a call to action to get cis people to step up and perform heroics. It’s a saviour trope with all the baggage attached.

It’s not a bad message but it also isn’t flattering to be depicted as the battered rat barely standing. It’s art. Art is going to strike you differently depending on where you stand. Both takes are valid because it’s subjective but the real pernicious bit here is somebody from a group featured in that art is telling people here how that art makes them feel and the immediate reaction is to tell them they are wrong to feel that way. That isn’t kind. It’s not empathetic. It is demanding unconditional gratitude from someone you feel owes it without reservation of quality of help recieved.

Sadly it’s true right now we as a community don’t really have the luxury of picking between good and bad allyship, we need all we can get… But it’s still kinda a shitty.

I dunno about that. This status quo was created because America came out of WWII smelling like roses. All of Europe was rebuilding and so American prosperity of the time was basically like being the one only slightly scorched house on a bombed block. It’s been long enough that the countries in question aren’t in need of leaning on the one stable currency.

This could be the push needed to equalize the world stage and break off of old habits. Like take Canada for example. Food self sufficiency in Canada was always a concern. That’s why there was a tarriff on US Dairy, because Canada wanted to retain domestic self sufficiency in one of it’s food production spheres. That issue persisted through other sectors but there wasn’t a strong political motive to make that shift. The government wasn’t called to protect and incentivize strong domestic production to a great extent because the US generally has a better growing year in the south. To not have food security however is a weakness in Canadian’s self determination if things go bad. Now that things have gone bad structure will be put in place and protected meaning a semi-permanent loss of market for American interests.

What Trump has proven is American volitillity in it’s government structure and voting block and nobody will want to tie a shoddy investment around their ankles. In fact some might take it as the opportunity to cut loose a problematic ally.

It really isn’t that simple. The north didn’t have as much strict segregation but in a way it was because they didn’t have to. Economic pressure reinforced by subversive hiring practices, prejudice in housing and hostile attitudes kept black communities tight knit and localized which meant you didn’t have to have specific “Colored schools” because they were created by these forces squeezing folks together into controllable blocks of population.

In the South the fall of segregation had a number of nasty fallouts which harmed black communities as well. When they merged the systems there was a historicly significant loss of black teachers. People got up in arms over really stupid questions like “What if my menstruating daughter had a black male teacher” and that prejudice ensured that a lot of the teachers who understood the challenges of being black in America were no longer in a position to help students.

This meant that effectively in the North segregated schooling continued to be a thing in practice but not in name while in the South it wiped out infrastructure that was helping black students succeed. It was handled incredibly poorly and was not unambiguously good but it did change a lot of the legal categorizations and is considered a win.

Technically that was a calculated movement of it’s time. They wanted a black character in a role that spoke to an easy childhood concept of authority to imply that power dynamically having black people in a dominant respected role in social spaces is a normal thing one doesn’t need to get upset over. Hence the whole friendly cop thing.

They were aware through the gay black actor they had in the role that police was something minority communities had issues with but the hope at the time was that more diversity in the force would be a solve. It’s naive from a modern standpoint but they did try.

It was sad that they purposefully kept the gay part of the actor’s identity under wraps. They knew they were asking him to do something harmful by keeping his private life strictly secret but the actor agreed that he was doing something he deemed worth the sacrifice.

It’s not nessisarily skewing the narrative, it’s just not providing context. Terrorist acts have a narrow definition in Canadian law. This guy could be a spree killer motivated by racism but unless that killing is for premeditated ideological, religious or political reasons to coerce a specific result or change of policy from the population / Government it doesn’t fall under the definition.

No manifesto or claim of reasoning or connections found to groups that claim responsibility - no terrorist designation.

A terrorist attack has a narrow definition in Canadian law where it is specifically part of a premeditated ideological, religious or political attempt to influence government policy or to intimidate a section of the public to a specific end. Basically if this guy didn’t have a manifesto or ever stated his reason within this rubric and was not part of a group that has specific aims then it follows under a regular old spree killer homicide unless it was racially motivated in which case it is also a hate crime.

Whether one uses cars or guns is not a factor in determining what counts as a terrorist act. The reporting on this has not been great ar clearing up this point.

There’s a very specific rubric for what counts as a terrorist attack in Canada. Probably the level of calculation and premeditation involved was a factor and that he’s not a part of an ideologically organized group that is trying to influence behaviour of a government or political body.

A spontaneous hate crime made against a population is technically not a terrorist attack by Canadian definition. To count you have to have done it for a narrow slice of very specific reasons.

But there are a lot of things that exist that aren’t exactly friendly. People often hinge their belief or disbelief in any divinity singularly on the bible. They consider proof of God existing is based on whether all the claims made in an old book are true - not that it is a fallible piece. It either has to be all true or all false which is not how any scientific text more than a decade out of date has proven.

Not saying that means anyone should start praying. The God as listed in the Bible given their behaviour does not seem either omniscient, omnipotent or benevolent but those ideals have shaped a lot of the discussion about whether something classifies as a “true” God or not. A lot of thought and debate goes towards squaring that circle. Sometimes the easiest answer is that lies exist. The presense of other gods are noted in the bible. Maybe that one was just a super powered Narcissist.

Actually more complicated than that. Sex is broken up into a bunch of factors. Phenotype is the word used to mean the grouping of characteristics we associate with either male or female. So that roughly covers genitals, secondary characteristics (boobs, body hair, build differences etc)… But it’s actually wild.

• Chromasomal sex - On it’s own means very little. If you have say an XY chromasome but for the sake of example an androgen insensitivity you develop as (phenotypically) female in the womb.

• Horomonal Sex - Is the mix of horomones that impact development. Whether you develop to appear male or female starts in the early stages of development in rhe womb and then kicks into high gear as puberty and can change unexpectedly. This means for example that there’s people who were born appearing entirely female and yet naturally develop along male lines later and vice versa.

• Internal reproductive Anatomy - This one gets crazy where individuals don’t always have internal organs that match their chromosomes. You can have opposite, none, both.

The precursor of trans medicine involved a lot of case studies seeing how naturally occuring variation in biological sex worked and the more it was studied the more scientists began to panic because they realized that the model of sorting into two strict sexes was flawed. There’s a lot of people out there who live practically their entire lives only to realize at the doctor’s office that they have surprise characteristics quietly existing hidden just below the skin. This lead to scientists realizing that for the most part the idea of phenotype and indeed a strict definition for biological sex is actually pretty wishy-washy.

The reason you weren’t taught this in high school is more or less that they just don’t prioritize it because they have to coach a group of students, many of whom are not scholarly material, through an overview of stuff. High school biology is basically all technically wrong because it’s been simplified to give you a taste of the discipline. If you start going to med school the first thing they do is tell you to light everything you think you know about the body on fire, throw it in the trash and start from scratch because half the stuff you were taught is going to need be unlearned. “Chromosome = sex” is one of the things that goes in the burn bin.

Technically that would be a defense if the god in question was actually as powerful as they say they are or that they are nessisarily good. There is always a possibility that Gods exist but are not on the hook to tell the truth and their goals do not align with humans.

A lying god telling the kids they have magic powers well beyond them and proving it like an uncle playing a dumb trick on the three year olds at a family reunion is a possibility. Maybe God exists and is just kind of an ass?

“Biological (insert gender here)” serves as a dogwhistle for a lot of organizations that actively push trans bigotry. It gives a fake impression of a scientific take on sex that really hasn’t been embraced by the scientific community for about 50 years at this point.

They aren’t telling you what to think here, they are alerting you to a tool that organized bigotry is using and giving potential tools to subvert it. Once you see “Biological man/woman” for what it actually is (non-scientfic false categorization) it really can’t be unseen.

Also - Can we stop with the calls that people are trying to control what people think? It’s pretty lame. There’s nothing about this interaction that is trying to force you. All that’s happening is you’ve denied that a certain school of thought is valid. You have stated your reasons why you think it’s invalid and now people who have taken upthat school of thought are defending their position. That’s just normal discourse.

Give you a hint. When people tell you “they are trying to control what people think” that’s actually doing more to control people - because it’s asking someone to take it on someone else’s faith that there’s nothing to be listened to rather than engaging with the arguement yourself.

Trans masc person checking in. Might be my bias or community or something but I get way less misgendering by guys under 30 than basically any other demographic. They seem to pick it up faster and be really chill about it in ways that a lot of the women in my life really don’t seem to get as comfortable with.

But there is definitely a part of my brain that sees men as being of my tribe in ways that women are not. Like not to say that I don’t have incredible women in my life whom I have incredibly close bonds with… But there’s definitely some kind of cognitive distance that has always kind of been there.

I think trans femmes might experience a similar situation with feeling accepted by women ( Or maybe not because TERFs tend to look at them as a threat) but to answer your question about if the bros are alright… Yeah, they good.

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We know we aren’t flashy. The world kind of forgets about us sometimes because we are next to the loudest kid in the class. We are proud generally of the co-operation we have with other places and groups. Our medical advances raise waters that lift all ships , we have a space program that primarily assists other nations space exploration. We have a military but we are primarily devoted to UN peacekeeping.

The Canadians were a pivotal force tasked with the Italian Campaign in WWII which had some of the most brutal on the ground city fighting of the war. My Grandfather was there from the beginning to the end of the Campaign… Yet I have heard Americans on here ask “Did Canada storm the beaches of Normandy?” as some kind of “gotcha” to shame us because they don’t know that we had our own beach operation but all they know is that Americans were there because Hollywood only shows American battles.

We are used to being kind of forgotten but we can be proud of ourselves for a job well done.

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A complete absence of funding isn’t the same as saying it isn’t an issue. At a government level there’s always more problems than money and manpower to solve them. Approaching it from that perspective is not a particularly healthy way to approach these situations. Realistically when you look at the the two cohorts you see very different behaviours. Funding for all shelters is currently massively declining across the board in Canada and no one pilots a new program when existing ones are failing.

Think of it like this. If you do not fear for your life but are escaping from an abusive relationship with child in tow what sounds like a better option : seeking help by going to a friend’s or relative’s place where there’s familiarity and seeking help from an authority for assistance OR going blindly into a shelter system with a lot of unknowns? While it’s true that men do need support seeking help from a formal shelter system is not a popular option.

The reason why women don’t tend to rely on their existing support systems is because it’s the first place abusive partners stalk if they intend a violent attack, not just an abusive encounter but an actual physical assult that puts other family members and friends lives at risk.

Hotel voucher programs and reserved open spots in pre-existing shelter systems do a similar solve to contemporary shelter programs but the reason mens shelters close isn’t always funding related. In part it’s because men don’t often choose that route because a restraining order is usually more than enough to deter a female abuser and it is more comfortable relying on people you know. In the cases of DV homicide women are way more likely to be killed if they leave, men tend to be killed if they stay. It’s not a matter of just dry DV stats. It’s in the nitty gritty details of how these scenarios play out by gender divide that cause these initiatives to fail… which means it needs dedicated grassroots support which by and large isn’t happening not because people won’t donate but because while straight men love to complain that there’s no mens shelters they are not coordinating dedicating their free time to make it happen. Queer specific initiatives are generally more successful because the organization structures are dedicated and they often do not rely on government but community support. What straight guys need to imbibe is you do not need a government stamp to start stuff.

I am not arguing for Gender specifc shelters what I am saying is that it’s not a matter of how many reports of DV, the motivating factor in funding is how often each statistical group end in a homicide. It’s a stumbling block which means that the priority often overshadows services for men that do exist when doing a casual search even online.

The main needs of men escaping DV are mental health support and police assisted extraction, temporary housing and childcare assistance. The first two are decently prioritized depending on Province. Here in BC there’s decent resources directly through Coastal Health and less great coverage the Fraser Health Authority but childcare assistance is across the board spotty and really 99. 9% of the time the elements of making someone physically untraceable are not nessisary if the offender is a woman which means that if we were to look into hotel voucher programs and relocation services instead of permanent brick and mortar shelters for those cases you could likely provide options that fill the requirements for communities in smaller towns with a quarter of the funding of a shelter. Straight men generally do not have to skip town so they can often rely on their previously made support structures more so the time spent in temporary housing is often stays of less than a week.

What a lot of advocates in the space keep pushing for is a replication of the system because of the idea that it’s not fair to give men a “lesser service” but the needs of the cohort are completely different and we should structure care to fit the needs based on an evidence based model instead of pointing to something else that is designed for a group with completly different needs.

That is a space that is more generally lacking. A lot of spaces prioritize women in part because there’s a real issue with abusive men hunting down and killing their partners when they try to leave so women require a spy-like bugout infrastructure to safely leave. Historically this trend motivated womens groups and queer centric undergrounds to go above and beyond and was reinforced later by government grant because establishing support while victims are still alive is cheaper than the apparatus of investigation for their murder. It’s a balance sheet game.

This hunting behaviour is something highly statistically unlikely for women to do which tends to mean support for straight men could look a lot different and be effective but also the monetary government incentive to provide it is not as lucrative for governments who are always triaging spending in sectors that don’t somehow save them money.

It’s absolutely correct that these resources should exist but it is going to take a much greater grassroots effort to maintain and structurally speaking expecting it to look exactly like the model in place for women is probably in part the enemy of progress because those models are prohibitively expensive.

It’s more like the definition used by Right leaning government to cast Progressive social agendas as the downfall of society because in their case you slap “Neo” on something to mean “Untested and scary”. This isn’t so much a “Tankie” thing so much as a Fox News thing.

They get away with it because people aren’t taught or don’t absorb the actual technical meanings of different labels for subtypes of political philosophy. Hence why “liberal” has become buzz word to mean “civil rights and social emancipation enthusiasts”, “conservative” is abandoned to be this wishy-washy ground that evokes both a retaliatory resistance to social movements and/or a sort of nebulous (often false) vision of fiscal austerity and “communist” a brush to tar a variety of social movements with that handily has an implicit conspiracy aspect.

None of these definitions are accurate but they serve to muddy the water. That’s really the point of it. To rob us all of accurate ways to discuss political matters and to create team sport like voting blocks.

Neoliberal doesn’t actually mean " The newest Brand of liberal" NeoLibralist regimes historically have also been exceedingly anti-queer. The term was coined in the 80’s to describe a burgeoning different brand of liberal government that focused on cutting spending by privatizing swaths of the government. Think Thatcher, Regan and the modern Republican party… See also the early Nazis who historically privatized huge amounts of government to pad the wallets of their supporters but the label was applied retroactively.

If they are getting rid of government services and outsourcing them to a private company that’s “Neoliberal politics”. You are right that they are effective as an empty soda can at stopping facism but that’s because they are usually better positioned to assume power, give up on democracy and go fascist but they aren’t the group you’re calling out here.

Really the bar for what “liberal” means is a system with a basic set of rights of the person that cannot be infringed upon by the government, universal rights of the person to own stuff (though not all stuff) and a dedication to some kind of democratic system. Basically it’s become democracy’s basic format and practically everyone in government who isn’t a fascist is some variation of liberal or at least playing by Libralism’s rules. It’s not a statement on socially progressive or socially conservative rhetoric. You’re probably better off specifying " Social Progressives" if you want to be accurate to whom you’re talking about.

It’s kind of the same rules as “NeoClassisism” which isn’t constantly updated to mean the newest thing. That term got coined to specifically refer to an art style that is now 300 years old. Neo these days practically never refers to anything cutting edge.